BEIJING, March 15 (Xinhua) -- China's iron and steel sector saw overall stable growth in 2019, as the continued effort in cutting overcapacity filtered through, data showed.

The output of crude steel saw an 8.3-percent growth to stand at 996 million tonnes in 2019, marking a new all-time high, while pig iron output went up 5.3 percent from one year earlier to 809 million tonnes, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) showed.

Driven by the hiking market demand, the total consumption of crude steel across the country reached about 940 million tonnes, up 8 percent year on year.

The industry, however, reported remarkable shrinking profit led by factors like accelerated output growth, higher costs of raw materials as well as lower sales prices of steel products.

The aggregate profit of the China Iron and Steel Industry Association members totaled 189 billion yuan (about 27 billion U.S. dollars) in the past year, 30.9 percent lower than the previous year.

Meanwhile, the export and import of steel products contracted by 7.3 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. Enditem

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